Many localities now initially compact collected waste prior to transporting the waste to a landfill in which permanent storage is effected. Initial compaction reduces the volume of waste which must be stored, and thereby maximizes the life of the landfill. Furthermore, compaction also reduces the number of trips required to transport a given mass of waste, and thereby permits greater efficiencies to be realized. Many jurisdictions have more than one waste collector and it is not cost effective for each collector to have a commercial compactor. Consequently, a waste transfer station is normally used to permit all waste collectors to share in the benefits of a commercial compactor.
Waste collected at the waste transfer station is usually injected into a rigid reenforced trailer, or other similar container, by the stationary compactor. The trailer then transports the waste from the transfer station to the landfill, wherein the waste is dumped for burial. The practice of injecting the waste into the trailer typically results in relatively short service life of the trailer, due to the services involved. The ever increasing cost of transportation has lead to an attempt to obtain greater densities of the compacted waste, thereby increasing the internal pressure applied to the trailer. The increased pressure and density require further structural reinforcement of the trailer, thereby increasing the tare weight and reducing the legal payload capacity.
An S-tube compactor is one which utilizes the curvature of the compactor to assist, compaction of the waste. An exemplary disclosure thereof is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,385, issued July 8, 1975, to Lewis White for Horizontal Trash Compactor, the owner of which is also the owner of the present application, and the disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. That patent discloses a compactor having a horizontal and a vertical section and a gate for increasing the compaction therein. Experience has now disclosed, however, that the location of the gate of White does not permit accurate uniform compaction to be achieved, particularly when the compactor is subject to waste inputs of varying feed rate and varying density.
In view of the above, it can be seen that there is a need for a device which achieves relatively high and uniform compaction density of waste in order to reduce transportation costs, while also permitting more waste to be carried per unit trailer. The disclosed invention provides just such a compactor and method, and one which not only achieves substantially uniform compaction density, but which also adequately regulates the volume of the waste injected into the trailer.